


through thick and thin (you were always on my mind)

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Getting Back Together, missing scene for a twitter fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 11:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Hollywood power couple Rey and Ben's break-up sets offa chain of events chronicled through a series of headlines. Two and a half years later, they find their way back to each other.





	through thick and thin (you were always on my mind)

**Author's Note:**

> Dive in for some exes-getting-back-together angst if you'd like, but this will make way more sense if you read the Twitter fic first!

“Hey, Ren! Ren, over here!”

“Mr. Solo, is it true that you and Snoke are no longer on speaking terms?”

“Ben, are you here for Rey?”

It’s that last question that stands out amidst a veritable cacophony, that rings in her ears as Rey turns to find herself face-to-face with the man she once knew as Ben Solo.

She’s not ready for this. It’s been barely two minutes since the first shriek of his name reached her ears, more than two years since she woke up to find his side of the bed cold, and _she is not ready for this_. Especially not with him looking at her like _that_ , not with him blocking out the rest of the world with his broad frame, his shoulders slightly hunched as he curls over her and his eyes resolutely fixed on hers even as they reflect the absolute loss she sees on his face as he struggles to find his voice.

“What you said–” Ben, Kylo, _Ben_ forces out in one breath, throat working and jaw clenched and fingers curled close to his sides, all the signs she’s more than familiar with, all the signs she should’ve forgotten by now–

The last time Rey heard his voice was four days after Christmas; the last thing he ever said to her was _goodnight, sweetheart_ as he gathered her to his chest and held her painfully close, and Rey had laughed and teasingly assured him that she wasn’t going anywhere and cuddled even closer.

In the morning he was gone, and now he’s _here_ and he’s looking at her with the same eyes that never avoided hers, not until those last few days, and he’s speaking with the same voice that once promised to never abandon her, _not until the day I die and maybe not even then_ –

“ _Ben_ ,” she cuts him off with a broken whisper, clears her throat and fights back tears and tries again. “Kylo. What are you _doing_ here?”

He flinches when she calls him _Kylo_ , even though she’s read a dozen insider reports about how he snaps at anyone who makes the mistake of using his old name.

“What you said, about spending your life with me–”

A fresh wave of tears hit her then, and she is powerless to stop them as she shakes her head at him and takes a stumbling step backward in a pathetic attempt to remind herself of the space between them.

“That was a different lifetime, _Kylo_ ,” she reminds him pointedly, voice thick with sorrow even as she keeps her head held high and brings one hand to her face to roughly swipe at her tears. He might still be, after all these years, the biggest man she’s ever known, but even Ben’s impossibly broad frame can’t hide her from hundreds of cameras and thousands of onlookers, all uncharacteristically silent as they strain their ears to catch a snippet of this unexpected reunion.

This isn’t how Rey imagined it would go, not that she’s ever admitted to imagining – or even thinking, or hoping for – a reunion. She’d made that mistake once in her childhood, held out hope for people who couldn’t be bothered to stick around, much less come back. Two days into the new year, when it finally sank in that Ben really was gone for good, she’d sworn never to make that mistake again, never to get her hopes up again–

And here she is anyway, too foolish and weak and _hopeful_ to turn her back on this man and walk away from him the way he did to her, the way she knows she should.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again Rey can’t tell if they’re as shiny as hers or if her tears are distorting her vision. “Why… why didn’t you tell me?” Ben asks in the same quiet, secret voice he once used to whisper sweet nothings and empty promises into her ear.

Sweet nothings and empty promises and not even a goodbye. Rey thinks of how cold the bed had been that morning, how empty the house, how dark and dreary the skies, and all of that she lets bleed into her voice when she asks, “Would it have changed anything?”

She won’t break. She _won’t_ , she can’t, she shouldn’t after all this time and all the nights she’s cried herself to sleep and all that he’s put between them–

But then Ben whispers, “ _Everything_ ,” and there’s no holding back the sob that rips past her lips, the wound she still carries with her after all this time, _was it me was it something I did wrong was there anything I could have done–_

A hand, warm and familiar and so, so gentle, curls around her wrist as his thumb sweeps up and down the sensitive skin there, soothing her erratic pulse. “It felt… it felt like everyone was keeping me at arm’s length, but you… you hurt the most of all. If I’d just _known_ –”

“I thought you did,” Rey protests weakly. How could he _not_ have known, how could he not have figured it out when she opened her arms and her home and her heart to him, when she chose to love him even though it was the most terrifying, dangerous thing she’d ever done? “Ben, you were _everything_ to me, how could you not… If you’d just _talked_ to me,” she cries, a low, mournful tone at the thought of what-ifs and if-onlys.

“I wish I had, Rey,” he sighs, and she watches as he runs his free hand through his hair, tugs at the edges in frustration the way she still vividly remembers him doing all the time– “More than anything in the world, I wish I had.”

And in his eyes she sees pain and loss matched only by her own, a familiar sight that haunts her even two years later. When his hold on her wrist loosens, when it seems as if he might leave again, Rey does what she wishes she’d had the chance to do the first time around.

She throws her arms around his neck and holds him in place, yanks his lips down to hers and _makes_ him stay. There’s a roaring in her ears that might be blood but is probably the crowd going wild, there’s fireworks blooming against the back of her eyelids that might be a thousand cameras going off but is probably just _Ben._

When Rey finally pulls away, he’s holding her as close as he had on their last night, maybe closer still. And all these years later he still looks at her like she’s a wonder to behold, like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Rey allows herself a smile at the thought, at the warmth that unfurls in her chest. “Would you… do you wanna get out of here and just… talk?”

Ben’s fingers dig into the small of her back; he’s so close he can’t even look at her as he speaks, just dips his head and brushes his lips against the shell of her ear. “But it’s your premiere–”

“Eh,” she shrugs, hides her face in his neck and presses a smile to his skin. “It’s just another summer blockbuster. They’re a dime a dozen, I hear,” she reminds him teasingly, softens the blow with a kiss to his throat.

He lets go just enough to look down at her, gives her that bashful smile she still remembers from the very first time he asked if she’d like to hang out in his trailer between scenes.

“I didn’t mean–”

Rey shakes her head, leans in to silence him with a quick kiss. “There’ll be time for that later. Follow me?”

“Always,” Ben vows, and they leave the red carpet hand-in-hand.

 

* * *

 

Across the street from the Coruscant Theater, safely hidden away in Maz’s diner, Rey smiles to herself as Ben rattles off their shared order, still burned into his mind all these years later. 

When he turns back and finds her beaming at him, he responds with a little grin of his own and an upturned palm on the table. Rey reaches for his hand without hesitation, laces their fingers together and revels in the familiar comfort of it all.

They’re silent for the longest time, lost in each other’s eyes like grinning fools until Ben clears his throat and glances away for a moment, arranges his thoughts and turns back to her with a straight face.

“Do you remember the sequel Luke and I worked on? The one for his old trilogy?”

How can she forget, when they spent their first unofficial date in his trailer talking about it for three hours? Ben, previously so distant and shy, had opened up to her like a flower blooming for the sun that night, shared an entire childhood’s worth of memories and laughter and mistakes over leftovers from craft services.

“ _Across the Stars,_ ” Rey nods, her lips twitching with fondness when Ben seems surprised by her memory of it. “You two wrote it when you were fifteen, when your parents sent you to live with him one summer.”

“And then I spent half my life editing and work-shopping it,” Ben admits, the first she’s ever heard of this. They’d been together for _four_ years, surely she would have noticed– but then again, they’d kept separate offices even after they moved in together, just to avoid any mix-ups with their respective mountains of scripts, and Ben was always in his whenever she’d video-call him on location, hard at work on something she’d always assumed to be acting-related.

“Two months before…” he falters even as her shoulders tense, as she waits to see what he’ll call it. “Two months _before,_ ” Ben repeats and leaves it at that, “I finally worked up the nerve to show it to him… and he… he laughed me off.”

His grip on her grows tighter, but not unbearably so, and Rey aches for him, for her Ben who’s so sensitive and self-conscious about his work that he refuses to watch any of his movies, that he ducks his head and curls into himself whenever anyone mentions a performance.

“He didn’t even bother to read it, said I should’ve given up on it a long time ago, that he never had any intention of actually making a sequel.”

“Oh, Ben–”

He shakes his head, squeezes her hand. “I went to my mom after that, thinking maybe I could get her to talk to Luke, just _talk_ to him and get him to at least look at the script. But she turned me away like she’s always done, too scared of even the smallest hint of nepotism.”

Ben isn’t the first troubled actor to come from the Skywalker family, Rey knows; the twins had gone through their own ups and downs, especially Leia who’d only just managed to distance herself from her film royalty parents when her biological parentage was revealed. The media had accused her of everything from using her family name to blackmailing Anakin’s associates to secure roles, and even though decades have passed Rey knows the older woman still carries that experience with her.

“She was just trying to protect you,” she points out to Ben, careful to keep her tone gentle and neutral. “She never wanted you to go through what she did–”

“All her protection has ever done is hurt me,” Ben mutters, and Rey finds herself at a loss when he pulls his hand away and retreats from her, leans back against his side of the booth while the waiter brings them their order.

Rey lets that conversation die, follows Ben’s lead when he tucks into his pancakes; they’ve gotten their usual after-premiere breakfast for dinner, a tradition established when he’d finally, officially asked her out after the premiere of the movie that had brought them together in the first place. Minutes pass in a busy silence until Rey can’t help it anymore, until even all the pancake she’s stuffed into her mouth can’t keep the question from her lips.

“Why me?” she asks, letting her fork go with a clatter. “I get why you needed space from Leia and Luke, but why _me_ , Ben? One minute I thought you were going to propose, and the next–”

“How did you know?” Ben asks, eyes wide and lips parted in shock.

“I found the ring in your sock drawer,” Rey admits, and throws in an unapologetic shrug for good measure when he simply blinks at her. “What? I was freezing and you always had warmer socks.”

He smiles fondly at the reminder and finally leans back into the conversation, elbows planted on the table. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rey worries her lower lip, thinks _would it have changed anything_ and wonders just how different their lives might have been if she’d just put on the damn ring and waited for him at the door with a firm _yes_ that night the way she’d wanted to. But instead– “I didn’t want to ruin it, so I waited. And waited. Then Christmas came and went so I thought, _maybe he’s waiting for New Year’s_ –”

“I was going to ask on Christmas Eve,” Ben reveals softly, not quite meeting her eye.

She reaches across the table, takes both his hands in hers and waits until he looks at her to speak. “Why didn’t you? You know I would’ve said yes, Ben, you know I would’ve stuck with you no matter what, even with the whole mess with the twins, even if you never spoke to them again–”

Ben shakes his head. “I know how close you are with my family, I didn’t want to make you pick sides–”

“I would’ve picked you,” Rey whispers. “I will always pick you.”

He takes a shaky breath, lips trembling and shoulders tense. “I was so…” One hand twitches in hers, and she knows he’s fighting the urge to run it through his hair. “ _God_ , I was such a mess, Rey. The whole thing with that stupid script, and then all anyone could talk about was how cute you and Finn were in your movie, how much better he’d be for you… and you seemed so quiet and _distant_ all the time–”

Rey frowns at the thought. “I was worried for you!” she explains, knowing even as she does that it’s far too late, that none of it matters now.

“I just… I thought you were going to break up with me,” he admits quietly, eyes fixed on her half-decimated pancakes rather than her.

“Ben.”

He’s fidgety with nerves, and this time when his hands twitch she lets them go and watches him tear a napkin to shreds. “It’s stupid, I know, I know that _now,_ but I was so scared, and I felt like I’d lost everything already anyway, so why not just… leave first, avoid the pain, run away like a fucking _coward_ –”

“ _Ben_ , if you’d just talked to me–” she can’t help but say again, her heart crying at how simple it could have been, at how happy they could have been.

“I wish I had. You have _no_ idea how much I wish… but it’s too late for that now, I guess.”

His voice is utterly defeated, his head is lowered like a kicked puppy, and Rey– Rey categorically _rejects_ that and all it means for them.

“No, it’s not.”

It takes Ben a small eternity to raise his eyes to hers, and when he does Rey gives him a smile that’s not as bright as she’d like but honest all the same. Because it’s been two and a half years, and–

“It still hurts, when they ask me about you. When I think about us. When I reach across the bed at night and realize you’re not there anymore.”

“Rey,” Ben breathes, regret and guilt marring his features. “Rey, I–”

“If it still hurts…” she goes on, determined to see this through, to make sure she does everything she can this time. Even if it doesn’t work out…

But she can’t afford to think like that, not when there’s still hope. “If it still hurts, then… then some part of me still loves you, I think. And if _that’s_ true then… it’s not too late, Ben.”

She holds out her hand, willing him to accept it, accept this and a second chance and _her_.

Ben stares at her hand for the longest time before he returns his eyes to hers. “What if… what if I fuck up again, Rey? What if I hurt you again?”

It’s a very real possibility, and a very real fear. But the alternative – to walk away from him, to go back to her half-life, to leave him like this, filled with pain and misery and regret – is even worse. Besides, this time– “You won’t,” Rey says simply, gives him an assuring smile. “Because this time we’ll deal with it _together_.”

The seconds tick by, but her smile remains in place, her faith remains resolute. And when Ben finally, _finally_ takes her hand, she knows it’s all going to be okay.

“Together,” he promises, and leans over the table to seal it with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Funny how I wrote the Twitter thread because I was going through terrible writer's block and couldn't write normal/traditional fic, only to end up writing a normal one-shot _for_ the thread. I'm... really rusty, but at least I managed to write something! Well played, universe.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any comments/questions/etc., please don't hesitate to reach out below!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://eleanor-writes-stuff.tumblr.com) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hiraeth_writes)


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